The eleven articles of this volume present recent research on new participatory approaches in collaborative social innovation. The term ‘social innovations’ in these papers comprise the full range from self-empowerment to concrete product-development. Some papers apply already established tools as design thinking in new fields. A couple of papers focus on the more recently discussed critical making methods as a combination of bottom-up makerlabs with critical theory from political science and analyse its effects on social innovations in education and research, in industry and civil society.
These idea of collaborative innovation in education is not new. Already in 1916, more than 100 years ago, John Dewey stated in his famous book on ‘Democracy and Education’ that democracy is not just a form of government but a way of life, a lifestyle, which students experience by project orientated learning and doing. In Germany, Georg Kerschensteiner demanded a new form of education in smal workshop-based project groups for the same reason already in the late nineteenth Century: the students should learn to collaborate and negotiate and by this gain both skills, motivation and expressiveness.
The papers of this volume critically analyse, which short,medium and long-term effects of collaborative innovation (with special emphasis on critical making) can be measured. Have these democratic innovation tools led to sustainable successes? In which fields? Where did they fail, and why?
The issue starts with a couple of literature overviews to define the research field and the state of research: Raunaque Mujeeb Quaiser (from the Indian Institute of Management in Rohtak, India) and Shivendra Kumar Pandey present a literature review on Design Thinking enabling innovation. His overview is based on more than 350 research papers on design thinking as a collaborate tool to push innovations. Omid Ali Kharazmi (from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran) discusses in his systematic literature review on collaborative innovation in the public sector (based on 77 papers) the effects of collaborative innovation in the public sector on creativity, knowledge and mutual trust. Tyler Dale Hauger (from the sociology department of NTNU Trondheim) analyses recent studies on participatory grantmaking and can prove that this new form of participatory grantmaking supports user-driven innovation and co-creation. Of course, one can discuss, whether philantropy must listen and follow participatory recommendations, but the effects of innovating grantmaking processes with participatory methodology are remarkable.
The second part in the issue is devoted to case studies: Regina Sipos (ex TU Berlin, now Social-Digital Innovation Initiative) and Maria Åkerman (Tampere University) describe the effects of critical technical practices in Indonesian graasroot projects for self-empowerment. It is at least noticable that the term ‘maker labs’, which is perceived as a bottom-up approach in the West, is rejected as ‘Western’ in the Indonesian context and replaced by other tems. Carolin Ermer (ex TU Berlin, now University of Flensburg, Germany, Department for Fashion Design) has analysed the applicability of critical making for fashion design in Germany.
Ütkür Güllühan (İstanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Turkey, Faculty of Education) Derya Bekiroğlu and Tuğçe Emral analyse the effects of a new ‘Online Creative Drama Method’ on creativity, fun and happiness of primary school students in Turkey. His analysis, based on experiments with four groups (two groups and two control groups) can prove a strong positive effect. Radana Kroutilová Nováková, Jana Martincová, Helena Skarupská (Tomas Bata University Zlín, Czech Republic, Department of Pedagogical Sciences) look on poor single mothers in the Czeck Republic and analyse the effects of social activation projects (2017–2019) on learning. They used the four fundamental types of learning (of the Unesco Commission 1996): the learning to know, to do, to live together, and to be. They had to admit that their collaborative processes supported social knowledge and behaviour but not ‘learning to do’ of poor single mothers.
Leisianny Mayara Costa Silva (Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brasil) with Kelly Carvalho Vieira, André Grützmann and Daniel Carvalho De Rezende can prove in her case study on public transport companies in Brasil that the introduction of female drivers had a sustainable effect not only on female passengers but on deliberation about transport policies and led to responsible innovation in transport network companies. Melissa Morali (University of Bologna, Italy, Sociology department) presents an overview on the actual and hot topic of social innovation in migration governance and analyses the role of collaborative approaches for pragmatic new solutions. Richmond Juvenile Ehwi (Cambridge University, UK, Centre for Housing and Planning Research) with Hannah Holmes, Sabina Maslova and Gemma Burgess present mid and long-term effects of co-creative stakeholder engagement processes in Smart City projects. In the last case study, Lucio Pisacane (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche IRPPS, Italy) with Serena Tagliacozzo suggests a new form of ‘relational evaluation’ especially for collaborative research and innovation networks. He sees this as a necessity to measure and acknowledge the positive effects of more complex collaborative research and takes EU-funding, which already stimulates cross-learning and experimentation, as a model for Italy.
In short, we can detect a collaborative wave in education, research and product-development at the same time as the deliberative wave in politics. Isn’t that good news! The papers in this volume contribute to this social and academic movement. Their reports on successes as well as partial failures strengthen the necessary critical debate for the further development of collaborative methods in education and research, in industry and civil society.
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Notes on contributors
Hans-Liudger Dienel
Hans-Liudger Dienel is professor for Work, Technology and Participation of Technische Universität Berlin (Berlin University of Technology) and Editor-in-chief of “Innovation. The European Journal of Social Science Research”. e-mail: [email protected].